Posted on 03/07/2008 5:10:33 AM PST by abb
A group of newspapers in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area said Thursday it will cut its staff by 10 percent but will avoid layoffs because enough workers took buyout offers.
The cuts affect the Contra Costa Times, Oakland Tribune and a string of 14 other daily and weekly newspapers operated by the Bay Area News Group-East Bay. The cuts will come from every department, including the newsroom.
Of the company's 1,100 workers, 107 took buyout offers, making layoffs unnecessary, according to John Armstrong, president of Bay Area News Group-East Bay.
Armstrong said he told the staff the cuts would improve the company's financial health, but he warned them he couldn't guarantee there won't be more cuts.
"We feel good about the fact that participation was wide enough we were able to avoid involuntary layoffs," he said. "It's important that our people focus on improving our newspapers and Web sites and growing our revenues and building our audience for advertisers."
More cuts are expected at other Bay Area newspapers.
The San Jose Mercury News planned to notify workers on its business side Thursday night whether they're being laid off, and it expects to announce newsroom layoffs Friday morning, according to Suzanne Arnaud, administrative director of the San Jose Newspaper Guild.
Arnaud said the paper's management told the union it planned to lay off 17 editorial employees. The Mercury News currently has 173 newsroom workers, down from 242 a year and a half ago, Arnaud said.
"It's getting wearisome," she said. "Tomorrow's going to be a pretty black day around here."
A call to Denver-based MediaNews Group Inc., which owns the Mercury News, was not returned Thursday.
ping
In a voluntary buyout offer, you pay your most able employees, the ones who can get another job immediately, to leave.
You are left with the rest.
They are firing 17 opinionated radical liberals from SF ... It is truly Good News!
http://www.contracostatimes.com/business/ci_8478984
Newspaper layoffs averted with buyouts
By George Avalos
STAFF WRITER
Article Launched: 03/06/2008 03:04:37 PM PST
WALNUT CREEK - The operator of this newspaper and numerous others in the Bay Area will reduce its staff by 10 percent, but was able to avoid outright layoffs by achieving the job cuts entirely by voluntary buyouts.
The buyouts will be given to 107 employees out of 1,100 workers. The reductions will be company-wide and will affect every department, including the newsroom.
The staff reductions involve 23 Bay Area daily and weekly publications, including the Contra Costa Times and Oakland Tribune, the company said Thursday. The papers are operated by Bay Area News Group-East Bay, also known as BANG-East Bay.
snip
http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0308/LA_Times_buyout_list_is_oversubscribed.html
March 06, 2008
Read More: Newspapers
L.A. Times buyout list is “oversubscribed”
New L.A. Times editor Russ Stanton and publisher David Hiller will address D.C. bureau staff tomorrow, according to a source.
It’s an important damage-control meeting, coming on the heels of Sam Zell’s tumultuous encounter there with reporters and editors. Today, Stanton met with some bureau staffers but will formally address the group — with Hiller — at 10 a.m Friday.
Buyouts are sure to be on the agenda, especially since an L.A. Times staffer tells me the program is “oversubscribed.”
On Wednesday, an informal list was floated on LAObserved, but according to a staffer, there will certainly be changes to it, since the L.A. Times higher-ups will try to retain some staffers, while letting go others not on the list. In addition, the Tribune folks in Chicago will probably weigh in before anything is completely settled on the buyout.
“They’re trying to hold the bureau together,” said an L.A. Times staffer, who added that a number of reporters and editors have been entertaining offers since Zell’s expletive-laden visit.
D.C. bureau chief Doyle McManus had referred to the Zell meeting as a “suicide bombing,” as I reported last week, and the impression I’ve gotten from several staffers in recent days is one of demoralization.
San Gabriel Valley gets hit
Gary Scott reports a bloodbath is in the works at the "new Inland Group" - San Bernadino Sun, Pasadena Star-News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune, Whittier Daily News, Ontario Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and the Redlands Daily Facts - with as many as 30 people out of jobs today and tomorrow.
One commenter wrote: " It was an absolute bloodletting today. At least 30 people among SGV, Ontario, S.B. and Redlands. A complete disaster. What was left of these papers are now just ashes."
This is a terrible week for MediaNews employees here in California and a terrible week for California journalism. Where's the outrage? Media News purchased and is sucking dry every newspaper up and down this state: from the big San Jose Mercury News and Long Beach Press-Telegram - to the smaller East County Times and Whittier Daily News.
It doesn't have to be like this. Others agree. We'll be at a half-day summit sponsored by Common Cause and Free Press on the state of the media in Southern California March 29.
And this just in...
News Tribune plans layoffs
Patrick Garmoe Duluth News Tribune
Published Thursday, March 06, 2008
The Duluth News Tribune plans to cut 15 to 30 people from its 225-person workforce over the next couple of months, Publisher Steve McLister said today.
“It could be less, but it also could be more,” McLister said.
He said the company was forced to consider the move because of a slide in advertising revenue of more than 10 percent since the paper’s fiscal year began Oct. 1.
Employee buyouts and layoffs have become common at newspapers across the country as advertisers spend more money online and as the Internet splinters the traditional newspaper audience. Newspapers also are feeling the effects of a nationwide economic downturn.
“The trend is telling us the majority of this is systemic to the industry,” McLister said, adding that company officials don’t expect revenues to significantly bounce back this fiscal year.
As a result, he said, some combination of buyouts and layoffs will be necessary. The cuts will include both union and nonunion staffers and will hit all departments, McLister said.
Of the paper’s 225 employees, 175 are represented by labor unions. Peter Passi, president of the Lake Superior Newspaper Guild, which represents 134 workers, cautioned the paper’s officials not to rush into cuts they may later regret.
“We understand the need to adjust to a difficult business climate, but we do want the company to be careful in these cuts and to go no deeper than it truly must,” said Passi, a business reporter at the newspaper.
And this...
Departing ‘Indy Star’ M.E.: “It’s Gotten Harder” To Do Good Work
By Joe Strupp
Published: March 07, 2008 10:30 AM ET
NEW YORK Pam Fine, who is leaving her post as managing editor of The Indianapolis Star to teach at the University of Kansas, said she has heard from numerous other editors who say they want to make a similar move.
“I’ve gotten dozens and dozens of notes, which I really appreciate, including some from editors who seem to convey their own interest in possibly leaving their own newsrooms for academic jobs,” she told E&P. “That sentiment is the result of perhaps both a life stage, but also because these are very difficult times to manage.”
Fine, 50, said budget cuts and other industry-wide problems also played a role in her decision. “It is hard and it has gotten harder to do the kind of work here we want to do,” she explained. “The demands have grown and the staff hasn’t.”
Asked if she believed more top editors would take the jump to teaching and non-newsroom jobs, Fine said: “I don’t know. I think people are thinking about their careers and where they’d be happy. Most of my colleagues still want to be in their day to day.”
Fine announced that she would leave the Star in April to become Knight Chair for News, Leadership and Community at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communications in Lawrence, Kans.
She admits she could spend more years in a newsroom and still loves the job. But with the economy and the news business facing tough times, the teaching option had more appeal. She said she had begun working on a master’s degree in recent years with an eye toward eventually teaching. When the KU search committee contacted her, the change came sooner than expected.
“I had given thought to teaching, but I wasn’t anticipating it so soon,” said Fine, who spent four years at the Star and had previously served as managing editor of The Star Tribune in Minneapolis. “But I am leaving because I saw a very creative opportunity ahead.”
Still, Fine believes her new post will allow her to remain involved in newspapers and other media. “I don’t feel like I am leaving the biz, I will be in the thick of things,” she said. “That is the way I look at it. I hope I can bridge the two worlds.”
Joe Strupp (jstrupp@editorandpublisher.com) is a senior editor at E&P.
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"Newspapers are getting rid of cartoonists at an alarming rate. They're trying to make themselves as irrelevant to readers as possible," said Milt Priggee, former cartoonist for Crain’s Chicago Business. ...
"The owners of newspapers have changed our job description," said Priggee, whose work has appeared in Newsweek, the Washington Post and the New York Times. "Before, the rule was to editorialize and provoke. Now it's to address and entertain. Don't take a position, don't editorialize, don't create any grief."
that poignantly illustrates conservative New Media marginalizing yet another propaganda tool of The Powers that Be.
Herbert Block was something else, a Herblock cartoon was not deniable, it hung there in the atmosphere, a permanent vision: Nixon taking the low road, Nixon needing a shave, Nixon as a kind of political thug. Herblock had seized on all the visual vulnerabilities of Nixon, the beard, the jowls, the nose, and had, as all cartoonists do, accentuated them and somehow created a figure that exactly matched the liberals' vision of Nixon. It was as if Herblock with his pen had caught the liberal view of Nixon as no print journalist or editorial writer ever did: the fake piety, the mawkishness, the disregard of civil liberties, the ability to exploit passions while pretending that he was only trying to calm them. It stemmed from those earlier years when Nixon was the connection between the McCarthy wing and the center of the party, a role that Nixon liked to exploit and then deny, and Herblock caught it and made it permanent. If television was something new journalistically, an instrument that politicians loved because it had no memory, then Herblock was the direct opposite, his memory was enduring, the past always lived for him.
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